The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to data transmission via a wireless communication device using header compression. Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple mobile devices. Base stations may communicate with mobile devices on downstream and upstream links. Each base station has a coverage range, which may be referred to as the coverage area of the cell.
In order to conserve resources, transmitters and/or receivers in a wireless communications system may perform various compression functions to reduce the amount of data transmitted using the air interface of the transmitter and/or receiver. One such compression function may be a technique known as Robust Header Compression (RoHC), in which duplicative data from multiple headers may be reduced, and remaining data compressed. Such RoHC techniques may be implemented when relatively large amounts of data are transmitted, such as in the case of streaming or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, for example. These RoHC techniques are effective to conserve air interface resources related to transmission of headers, but in certain situations the size of a transmission, including the header information and associated payload, may exceed the size of a resource grant for transmission.